Are you spending hours writing content that will never see the light of day on search engines? Most brands today have become experts in churning out content - from blog posts to case studies, ebooks and videos, they are leaving nothing to chance!
But here’s the deal - only visible content matters.
You see, it takes more than just writing great copy to get your content to rank high on search engines!
According to popular stats, 95% of people never look beyond the first page of search results - that’s right the stakes are high.
Here’s what you need to do to get more eyes on your brand - optimize your content for SEO. While this might seem like a tantalizing ordeal for most of us, we’ve put together an exhaustive list of content optimization tools that are built to make this process a whole lot easier!
Content optimization tools to the rescue
Still, wondering what content optimization is all about? Let’s break this down for you…
Content optimization is the process of ensuring that your content ranks high in search engines and possibly reaches a larger audience.
With SEO only getting more complex these days and Google rolling out new algorithm updates, content optimization tools are the need of the hour!
While there are plenty of content optimization tools in the market, we’ve gone ahead and done the heavy lifting for you - we tested the best ones out there so that you don’t have to!
Let’s look at the top content optimization tools that will double (triple, even) your organic traffic and get you the most eyeballs and conversions!
MarketMuse
No doubt MarketMuse is one of the most comprehensive content optimization tools today. Built for large enterprises, you might find the pricing to be on the higher end with the most basic plan starting at $179.
This cloud-based tool utilizes AI technologies to help you build competitive content that will rank higher in SERPs. MarketMuse offers an entire suite of content optimization solutions and helps you build workflows throughout the content creation process - from ideation, research, writing to optimization, and beyond!
With a whole lot of features available, navigating through the tool might seem a little overwhelming. Not to mention, analyzing and breaking down the wealth of data available can be a time-consuming task!
Having said that - what’s impressive is, as soon as you create your account, the tool crawls your website, analyses all your pages, and pulls up a beautiful dashboard that lets you track how well your content is fairing.
Before we take stock of the tool with a bunch of pros and cons - here’s a quick look at how MarketMuse compares to Dashword.
Pros:
- An excellent functionality enabling detailed research and competitor analysis
- A robust AI-powered content optimization tool with content advisory features including first draft creation
- Great collaboration tools and rich insights to optimize better
- Top-notch content briefs
- The great internal linking tool
- An end-to-end content optimization tool for professional content marketers
Cons:
- Complicated user interface - might be a bit of a hassle for beginners
- Lack of a built-in keyword research tool
- Too many workflows, making it quite a complex tool to use
- Expensive and only ideal for companies with bigger budgets
Hunting for the best alternatives to MarketMuse?
Now if you’re looking for a better alternative to MarketMuse that won’t end up drilling a hole in your pocket - we can help!
While the competitors may not be free (at least, not the high-quality ones), you can get started for free on Dashword (without providing your credit card!).
So let’s get right to it. These handpicked tools may fit the bill for most of us but we are laying out the pros and cons, just so you can make a more informed decision.
1. Dashword
Dashword could be the ideal alternative to MarketMuse. The tool is even priced nominally for the advanced feature-set that it has to offer.
The basic plan called ‘Hobby’ starts at $29.If you upgrade to the ‘Professional’ plan at $99, you even get to run unlimited reports. While there might be one focus keyword for which you want to create a report, the unlimited reports feature lets you build individual reports for even the smaller keywords that you want to rank for.
What’s more, you can even invite up to 5 team members enabling a smooth collaboration with teammates and external writers.
Dashword analyses the top SERP results and provides actionable data and benchmarks for the given keyword.
Pros:
- Improve your content as you write with real-time feedback
- Allows you to make reports public and share them with guests and external writers
- Very affordable pricing plans and an extremely easy to use tool
- Lets you generate the first report for free and you can even generate unlimited reports on the ‘Professional’ plan
- Uses NLP to pull up the most relevant terms for your topic saving you tons of hours that you would need to spend on research otherwise
Cons:
- Report generation could take up to 2-3 minutes
2. Frase.io
While content research may not be as robust as MarketMuse, Frase.io is a trendy alternative that has quite a few products to offer. For the sake of this article, let’s just stick to the features that matter when it comes to content optimization.
Let’s start with the automated content briefs - these briefs are built based on the top 20 results on Google, and features top questions asked the headlines on each page, and topics that are trending based on your keyword.
The feature that stands out about Frase has to be the rich data they pull up based on questions from Reddit and Quora.
Their basic plan for individuals starts at $44.9 and they have an additional plan for teams at $114.99. They even have an Enterprise plan where you get unlimited document credits and access to AI content generation. The pricing for this plan is customized based on your requirements.
Pros:
- A simple and straightforward to use tool
- You can easily integrate it with Google Search Console
- Custom SEO templates help you structure your content
- Offer a great set of questions from popular forums
- Has a clean UI
Cons:
- Lacks in-depth knowledge
- Competitor analysis offered by other platforms is better
- No in-built tools for keyword research
- Cannot invite external writers to use the tool
3. SurferSEO
SurferSEO is another easy-to-navigate tool that lets you optimize content in different languages, as you prefer. So here’s the deal with SurferSEO - they give you detailed reports that are rich in data (a little too much data, to be honest) on image alt tags, word count, and even the total number of sponsored links.
Their content editor needs to be given due credit, not only can you optimize content in different languages but you can optimize content for more than one keyword at a time.
Not as affordable as Dashword but still a better option when compared to MarketMuse, SurferSEO’s basic plan starts at $59.
Pros:
- An excellent tool if you’re looking to optimize content in different languages
- Easily integrates with WordPress and Google Docs
- Content score analyses 500+ factors
- The simple on-page optimization tool
- Eliminates writer’s block with detailed content briefs
Cons:
- Excess data makes it a complex tool to use
- Not the best tool if you’re looking to collaborate with other team members
- The interface is a bit cluttered
- No backlink opportunities
4. Topic
Topic is considered to be a reliable tool for content optimization. Topic comes with its very own built-in keyword research tool (wouldn’t say it is the best) giving you insights from monthly search volumes to search trends, backlinks, and keyword ideas!
Priced on the higher side, Topic’s basic plan comes at a costly rate of $100 per month. The tool however does not use a numerical system but a letter grading system to display the content score which can seem a little vague at times.
Pros:
- Offers a detailed competitive analysis
- Optimize content in 5 different languages (English, German, Italian, Portuguese, and French)
- Lets you roll over unused credits to the next month
- Pretty neat user interface
Cons:
- Lacks required collaboration features
- The keyword research tool is considered to be very average
- Displays content score with a vague lettering system
5. Clearscope
ClearScope is among the popular content optimization tools out there and for all good reasons too! Trusted by some of the best bloggers and organizations, Clearscope is known to help you get the most out of your content.
Clearscope is also ranked one of the most user-friendly tools that work wonders in driving visibility for your content from organic search.
Clearscope is very clear with their offering, they are more focused on content creation and optimization. The tool offers basic keyword research and competitor analysis features with primary importance given to the content editor tool. Similar to MarketMuse, Clearscope is expensive with the pricing starting from $170.
Pros:
- Best content optimization tool for beginners
- Offers great customer support, product training, and onboarding resources
- A fast and intuitive user interface
- A great tool to integrate with internal processes and workflows
- Provides an excellent content editor
Cons:
- It’s on the expensive side
- Does not help you with content strategy as the main focus is on content creation
Gear up with the best optimization tool for your content marketing arsenal
A lot of time and effort goes into pushing out great content, which is why having the best tool to optimize your content is of paramount importance. If you’re in two minds about shelling out money and investing in a tool, then we’d recommend going with the most affordable of the lot - Dashword.
Offered at a great price point, the tool is designed to ensure that your content starts ranking higher in organic search results. Try it out for free and experience the best-in-class features that make it one of the easiest tools to use for content optimization.